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MONOLOGUE







MONDAY, JULY 31, 2023


ONE MAN'S QUEST FOR THE FUTURE OF CINEMA


Douglas Trumbull 
1942-2022


The legendary filmmaker and visual effects pioneer behind 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Blade Runner, dedicated his life to
engineering the future of cinema.
When he passed in 2022, Douglas Trumbull had been working for over a decade on
his next-generation cinematic format titled Magi, capturing footage in 3D at 120
frames per second, presented in the Magi Dome, a 20-foot tall, dome-shaped
theater, equipped with a deeply curved, hemispheric screen that wraps around the
audience, filling their peripheral vision.



Magi Dome Theater

“I’m trying to make a movie in this(format) because my whole mental set is how
to make an immersive movie experience…which started with Stanley Kubrick. When
he was working in 70 millimeter, immersive Cinerama, there were these 90 to
100-foot-wide screens in theaters back in those days. They’re not around
anymore.”(A1)
Stanley Kubrick first encountered Trumbull’s work at the 1964 World Fair in New
York, when he saw 'To the Moon and Beyond', a spaceflight film projected onto a
massive “Moon Dome”, on which a 21-year old Trumbull had worked as an
illustrator.



Moon Dome at the 1964 World Fair

Kubrick was so impressed by the experience that he hired its production company,
Graphics Films, to assist in the pre-production of his upcoming science fiction
film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. 
A few months later, Kubrick decided to move the entire production to London, and
Trumbull found himself scrambling for a job, “I got laid off. The contract was
over and he was going to make it somewhere else.
I said, “This sounds like a good deal, I want to get in on this movie.” I called
my boss Con Pederson and I said, “I want to work on this movie, how do I contact
this Kubrick guy?”
He said “I have this contract, I can’t talk about it, I have a nondisclosure
agreement,” but I didn’t so I said,
“I’m not under contract and I’m unemployed, please help me out Con.”
So he said, “Well, Kubrick’s phone number is penciled in the corner of the
bulletin board downstairs in the office.” Literally, that was the connection. I
didn’t even work there, but I went in the back door, because there wasn’t any
security at the time, I find this little phone and I cold call Stanley Kubrick
and say, “I’ve been working on these drawings and I want a job,” and he said
“Okay.” He bought me a plane ticket and I went over there.



Trumbull and Kubrick on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey

“So I’m there, I’m just this young guy. I was never even involved with the
camera department at Graphic Films, I was just doing these illustrations…And
that was my beginning of my transformation of having to learn about photography
and having to learn new and different ways to solve these problems and having
the support of Stanley Kubrick who said, “Yeah, get the animation camera, you
need a piece of glass? Get it. You need a light? Get it. You need to go downtown
to buy a bunch of lithograph materials? Go.” This led to this process of
creative things, technical solutions, photography and art, all going on
simultaneously. I was 23. It was an incredible break, but I was the right guy
for the job.”(A15)
As the years passed and the production continued on, Trumbull’s responsibilities
grew wider and greater, culminating in him crafting the iconic Stargate sequence
at just 25 years old.



Stargate Sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey

Throughout his entire career, Trumbull would reference how Kubrick’s attempt to
“change the form” with 2001 shaped his perspective on cinema, “Kubrick said “You
know, I can actually change the way I direct. I don’t have to do
over-the-shoulder shots and stupid melodrama and the actors’ dialogue and
explain everything. I can just show it and it will be immersive.” And he started
extracting shots out of the movie. Because he said “I want the audience to feel
like they’re in space. I don’t want to tell a story about Keir Dullea in a pod,
I want to tell a story about you being in space.”(A1)
“That’s where Kubrick profoundly affected me in terms of what could be the
future of cinema- or a future of cinema, an immersive art form where the
director has to consciously decide to allow the audience to participate and be
present in the situation.”(A2)
According to Trumbull, this required the massive, curved screens of Cinerama
theaters, “He felt a responsibility because he was one of very few filmmakers
that was actually asked and authorized to make a Cinerama movie. This was
90-foot wide screens—unheard of today—and these big, deeply curved special
Cinerama theaters. And he said, “I feel a responsibility. I’ve gotta take people
on this trip.”(A10)

After directing his first feature film titled Silent Running in 1973, Trumbull
partnered up with another special effects talent, Richard Yuricich, to form
Future General Corporation in 1975. 



Trumbull and Yuricich on the miniature set of Blade Runner


Funded by Paramount, FGC was an endeavor to improve the technology used to make
films. Within the first 9 months of its existence, Trumbull states, “We invented
Showscan. We invented the first simulator ride. We invented the 3D interactive
video game. And we invented the Magicam process(an early version of live
compositing, as seen on Carl Sagan’s Cosmos).”(A4)

Building off the engineering work at Future General, Trumbull designed his
second feature film, Brainstorm, around their newly developed, high frame rate
format called Showscan, a 70mm film format projected at 60 frames per second. 
Showscan became the first of it's time, as nearly all films since the dawn of
sound have been presented at 24 frames per second. Showscan offered an image
with remarkably less motion blur and four times the resolution of conventional
film. Today, one may recognize high frame rates in video games and sports
television broadcasts, employed to give the viewer a smoother, more detailed
experience.



A Showscan Camera in Film as Experience - 1987


Showscan found itself a passionate and devoted following, including famous movie
critic Roger Ebert, who happily used his platform to promote Trumbull’s efforts,
calling Showscan the most realistic film process ever demonstrated, “Trumbull
created a picture so incredibly high in quality that the screen seemed to be a
transparent window revealing an actual image.”(A17)

Heavyweight Hollywood directors like John Badham(Saturday Night Fever) and Tony
Scott(Top Gun) endorsed Showscan, Richard Donner(Superman) once saying “At this
point, I know of nothing else that is as exciting, as inventive, as creatively
stimulating as Showscan”(A3)


Unfortunately, despite presenting this advanced film format all over the
industry, gaining acclaim from both the studios and filmmakers, Trumbull wasn’t
able to get Showscan installed in cinemas, “There was this kind of business
problem which was that the theaters said, “We’re not going to put in a bunch of
projectors to show this movie unless all the movies from Hollywood are made in
Showscan…The studios said we all love it but we’re not gonna do it unless all
the theaters will show it, so it was kind of a catch-22 that no one would put
their foot forward and make the commitment to start transforming the movie
industry into a higher frame rate technology…so I couldn’t get that to happen
and I had to make Brainstorm conventionally.”(A12)


Still, Trumbull was far from giving up on the technology he had developed,
leaving feature filmmaking to craft projects exclusively in Showscan, “I could
easily make a regular motion picture and I’ve had many offers to make regular
motion pictures, but I am so convinced now that it’s possible to make a totally
new kind of motion picture in Showscan that that’s the only way I want to
work.”(A13)

In 1983 Trumbull developed New Magic, a 22-minute short film showcasing the
realistic effect of Showscan. In 1986 Trumbull presented Showscan to the public
at the World’s Fair in Vancouver and in 1987 released a documentary covering his
personal film journey and the many advocates of Showscan, titled Film as
Experience. He continued for over a decade to campaign for this format,
insisting it was the natural next step for cinema, “It took 13 years to get
paper diapers launched in this country. It took somewhere between 7 and 10 years
to get zippers put on clothing. I’m very used to the idea that this is a natural
process we’re going through here. It does take time for people to see it, get
used to it…it takes a while to gather consensus.”(A13)

The struggle to get Showscan installed in cinemas continued into the 90s before
there came a unique opportunity for Trumbull to work with another one of his
inventions, the motion-based Ridefilm, when Steven Speilberg hired him to direct
Back to the Future: The Ride at Universal Studios Orlando.



Behind the scenes of Back to the Future Ride Miniatures

“It was kind of the ultimate immersive experience that brought together giant
screen IMAX dome projection, photographic effects, special cameras, the whole
idea of motion-based entertainment.”(A5)
“To me, the Back to the Future ride was a really major experiment in cinematic
immersion….For the first time the screen is not just here…it’s all around
you…”(A11)



A patent diagram depicting the ride film technology


“The shocking thing to me was that it was never reviewed or considered by the
film industry as a leap of cinematic potential, it was just dismissed as a theme
park attraction.”(A2 )
Soon after completing Back to the Future: The Ride in 1991, Trumbull was hired
to craft an even more ambitious, high-tech cinematic experience for the brand
new, pyramid-shaped Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas.
“This is the first time that anybody’s ever said to me, ‘You could design the
whole thing.’ and not only the concept of the shows and the production of the
shows but the design of the theaters themselves.”(A8) 



The Luxor Pyramid under construction in Las Vegas

After being denied the projector brightness and 30fps frame rate he wanted for
Back to the Future, Trumbull was now able to craft visuals in stereoscopic 3D at
48 frames per second, leaps beyond anything seen at the time. 
Architect Gregory Beck would later reflect on his transformative experience
working on the Luxor Hotel; “My career changed when Doug asked me to design
three special venue theaters for Luxor Las Vegas. Not surprisingly, each
featured one of his brilliant inventions- the Ride-film, a Showscan virtual
stage set, and an impossibly steep vertical screen theater.”(A9)
Titled “Secrets of the Luxor Pyramid”, the three-part story centered around the
discovery of a magical obelisk in a fictional dig site under the Luxor Hotel. 



Riders in-line for In Search of the Obelisk

The first part of the experience, In Search of the Obelisk, functioned much like
the Back to the Future ride. Riders are towed through a secret excavation lab
under the Luxor, dragged into a chase as the precious obelisk is stolen, pushing
riders through time and space itself. 



The Luxor Live stage and 3D screens


The second installment, Luxor Live, was a parody of television talk shows, where
the actors from In Search of the Obelisk appear live, performing on a stage
below a “live feed” of an eclipse over Egypt, which eventually disrupts the
show. Audiences were instructed to put on their 3D glasses to view the extended
solar eclipse computer graphics(CG) animation.



The Theater of Time

The final part of the attraction trilogy, and the most popular, was titled, The
Theater of Time. This was the steepest theater ever designed, seating 350 total,
with each row placed 4 feet above the one in front of it, the projector mounted
in the center of the middle row. The theater was so steep that each seat was
equipped with a safety bar that descended over audience members before the start
of the film. The screen was 7 stories high with a 2:1 vertical aspect ratio
similar to the smartphone screens of today. The visuals combined masterful
miniature work with early CG visuals, depicting three different futuristic
Egyptian societies at 48 frames per second, twenty years before the same tech
would reach cinemas(and remain on Televison).


Seeing that by the 2000s Trumbull had directed more ride-films than he had
feature films, it's easy to doubt how much his ride experience would fit into
the standard cinema experience. Trumbull himself insisted the kinesthetic motion
in his ride-films was unfit for true cinema, “I wouldn’t call dynamically moving
seats dramatic filmmaking and I certainly wouldn’t ask Steven Speilberg or
anybody to be involved in a film where the seats are jerking around.”(A13)

Ironically, Trumbull has also compared the last act of Kubrick’s 2001, his
primary inspiration, to an amusement park ride, “It became kind of a 60’s light
show…being the kind of things they do at a rock and roll concert where they just
project all over the walls and ceilings with liquids and stars and strobe lights
and all this kind of stuff…it was badly reviewed.
“No one in the normal critical movie reviewing world knew what to make out of
this movie. They didn’t understand it at all, and about 30 days into the release
of 2001 the studio was ready to abandon the movie and pull the plug. They said
nobody gets it. The reviews are bad and there’s nobody in the theater. Until one
of the guys at the MGM publicity department said let’s call it ‘The Ultimate
Trip’. They rebranded the movie The Ultimate Trip and people started smoking a
little pot and going to see it front row….so that was really part of the
transformation of people’s understanding of what Kubrick was trying to do as a
filmmaker, which was to transport the audience to another dimension”(A11)

Kubrick himself once detailed his approach to 2001, “I tried to create a visual
experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates
the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute
McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an
intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of
consciousness, just as music does.”(A6)

Despite Trumbull's enthusiasm for technology, he understood that crafting a more
immersive experience required a new approach to film language, “As you start
implementing these more immersive technologies where the screens get larger and
wider, and the image becomes much more realistic and involving, you start
heading into this territory that’s like 2001 which was a first-person
experience…that an edited, dramatically performed classic movie style, with
actors and over-the-shoulders and singles and closeups and all that kinda stuff,
which is fine for a lot of movies, but if you’re going into this new territory I
think we need to start exploring the language of cinema and how you can tell a
different kind of story in a different way.”(A12)

As the years went by and none of his inventions were accepted into the Hollywood
ecosystem, Trumbull’s career mission to advance the mainstream theatrical
experience appeared to be a failure. Luckily, in 1994, Trumbull merged his
Ridefilm company with the IMAX corporation and developed a plan to bring it into
the commercial entertainment marketplace, raising over $300M in a successful
IPO(A14). Today, IMAX is far and away the most well-known premium format in
theaters, “I’m very proud of proving that you can bring a new technology into
the mainstream of the movie business…You can actually change the shape of
theaters, change the screen size, change the film size. You can do all these
things.”(A3)



Trumbull wearing the first IMAX 3D glasses


Another seismic shift came with the industry’s transition into digital
projection, in which Trumbull quickly found exciting new engineering
opportunities, “I found out that the (digital) projectors are running at 144
frames a second and I said what!?!? 144? That’s twice as much as Showscan was,
and you’re doing it already? And there’s thousands of projectors out there that
do that?.. Could we do a new frame every flash?”(A3)


Trumbull quickly transitioned his efforts into developing the digital Magi
system, “When I found out Christie had developed a mirage 4k projector capable
of running 3D at 120 frames per second, I realized it was now time for me to get
back to making movies.”(A3)


As he was developing his new digital format, Trumbull began to see popular
filmmakers trying their hand at the high frame rate cinema he'd been
prophecizing for decades.


Peter Jackson on the set of the Hobbit

Peter Jackson became the first director to have a 3D, high frame rate(HFR)
theatrical release with The Hobbit in 2012. Unfortunately, it was widely panned
by audiences for looking too smooth, too real, and according to Trumbull, "more
like television". 
In a 2014 interview, Trumbull addressed this apparent failure of high frame rate
cinema, “I can only imagine the kind of meetings that happened between Peter
Jackson and the distribution head at Warner Brothers. They did not support the
48 frame thing. Peter paid for it himself. He said, “I really want to do this.”
And they said, “You’re on your own, pal.” So he did it and he’s a happy camper
all during production because he’s seeing the blurring and strobing is going
away and it looks much better…you can acclimate to it to where you don’t think
of it as television—you think of it as more clarity.
“Unfortunately, the audience didn’t quite see it that way. They showed a short
reel of The Hobbit at CinemaCon(2012) and it got really bad reviews—just
attacked viciously. So even though they had arranged for I think about ten
thousand theaters to be fully equipped with all the stuff necessary to go 48 or
60 in theaters, the studio pulled the plug and gave them I think 400 theaters
with 48 frames.”(A10)


Nonetheless sticking to his decision, Peter Jackson doubled down and released
the two remaining Hobbit installments in HFR, “48(frames per second) is a way,
way better way to look at 3D. It’s so much more comfortable on the eyes…It was
interesting to try to interpret what people’s reaction was.”(B4)

While it seemed like the majority of filmgoers found the HFR distracting and
odd, it should be noted that there are still fans of the smooth, crisp HFR look,
including Trumbull, "I’ve seen the movie all ways – I’ve seen it in 2D at 24
frames, I’ve seen it in 3D at 24 frames, and I’ve seen it in 3D at 48 frames.
And because I’m so adapted to it, I really like the 48 frames."(B14)


Unfortunately, for most people, it proved to be an unnecessary distraction. It’s
also worth mentioning that Jackson himself, stepping in late to replace
Guillermo Del Toro on the Hobbit movies, admitted he did not have the time in
pre-production to meticulously alter his visual approach for this new format, “I
spent so much of The Hobbit feeling like I was not on top of it. The fact that I
hadn’t had much prep and I was making it up as I went along and even from a
script point of view…I hadn’t really gotten the entire scripts all the way
through.”(B10)


Several years distant from the Hobbit trilogy, Peter Jackson could reflect on
his HFR experience with hindsight, “I was pleased by the time we finished. But
it took us the three Hobbit movies to figure out how to color correct it and
grade it properly so it didn’t look, you know, the first one wasn’t…We made a
lot of changes after the first Hobbit movie, and then the second, and then the
third…and then I think we were getting to feeling pretty good towards the end.
It’s up to filmmakers and I know that Ang Lee, I believe, is looking at doing a
movie in high speed.”(B5)



Ang Lee on the set of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Ang Lee, acclaimed director of Life of Pi and Brokeback Mountain, was the next
director to get his film released theatrically in 3D HFR, with both Billy Lynn’s
Long Halftime Walk in 2016 and Gemini Man in 2019. These films, much like
Trumbull’s Magi system, were shot and presented in 3D at 120 frames per second. 
Despite these bold decisions, Lee claims he is not a tech guy, “I cannot hardly
use email. My smartphone? I only call out. Zero interest in technology. The
opposite of technology. That is me.”
Yet Lee insists that every movie could utilize this tech, “It’s more like how
our eyes are designed to see. I think people are so wrong to see 3D and HFR as
tricks that only hacks use for action or spectacle. I think it’s the opposite.
What 3D gives you is intimacy, and what 3D does best is portray faces. I’m so
eager to show that. That’s what 3D is about, not action. We haven’t even gotten
there yet.”(B8)
Unfortunately, neither of Lee’s films appear to have changed the opinion of
general audiences. Just like with The Hobbit, the high frame rate presentation
was criticized for looking “too real”. Instead of immersing viewers in a real
space with real people, it gave the impression of watching a bunch of actors in
makeup.

Trumbull wasn’t afraid to share his harsh opinion of Lee’s use of the
technology, despite promoting both Billy Lynn and Gemini Man prior to their
releases, “When he became attached to Billy Lynn, he came to view Magi six times
with various members of the crew and fell in love with it, but he wanted to go
further with it, something he called “the whole shebang.” He decided to shoot
with two cameras capturing 120fps for both eyes in sequence and project it with
dual Christie projectors at 28-foot lamberts, which was just not possible. There
were not screens big enough available to do this. This led to very vivid images,
but they looked like video.
“Lee had arranged to screen some battle footage from the flashback scenes at the
NAB(National Association of Broadcasters) convention. I was overcome. I mean, I
was shaking. It took me about 30 minutes to get a hold of myself afterwards, and
I thought, “this is really going to be something.” But it didn’t work out. When
I went to the premiere at Loews Theatre in New York, it just wasn’t a good
experience.
“The bad press around Billy Lynn hasn’t given HFR a good name; it has certainly
pushed back our efforts of what we are trying to do here.”(B9)

What Trumbull tried to explain to Ang Lee was the way he solved that dreaded
soap opera effect, “The problem with digital projectors and televisions is that
they have no shutter. If you increase the frame rate and don’t have the shutter,
it’s going to look exactly like television. That’s the problem with Gemini Man.
I tried endlessly to explain this to Ang Lee over and over again, and he never
got it. None of those guys ever understood it. And they put that movie out with
no shutter. Digital projectors in movie theaters don’t have shutter. I found
that you can actually add a shutter in the DCP copy of the movie with black
frames that replicate the shutter. That’s the difference between cinema and
television — the shutter. They keep making the same mistake. Peter Jackson made
the same mistake with The Hobbit.”(A14)

According to Trumbull, by shooting and projecting with the Magi system, you’d
have a high frame rate film without the soap opera effect, evoking something
entirely realistic and unique, something Trumbull refers to as “perfect temporal
continuity”.



Trumbull posing with a screen of UFOTOG


In order to determine how effective this solution is, one would have to see
UFOTOG, Trumbull’s own film crafted for Magi, shot specifically to utilize the
immersive image. Trumbull spent a considerable amount of time touring and
screening UFOTOG for audiences in 2014, but the 12-minute short is now
unavailable, and most likely will never again be showcased in the theater it was
designed for. Only a handful of people have been out to Trumbull’s ranch in
Massachusetts to see UFOTOG in the Magi Dome theater, including the third and
most recent Hollywood director to release a film in HFR 3D, “I don’t know what
Jim Cameron is doing with the next “Avatar” movies but I’ve shown him what we do
here and he was blown away.”(A14)


Trumbull closely aligned himself with James Cameron under the media spotlight,
honoring Avatar as a critical example of what cutting-edge technology can do for
audience immersion, “It’s not that I wanna talk about Avatar forever but Avatar
created an alternate world. A kind of virtual reality world that would benefit
from high frame rates. It would not be diminished by having a super real
environment to it that would be beyond television in that kind of texture. Jim
Cameron wants to shoot his next film at 48, 60, or 72(frames per second), he’s
been very open about it. He’s been very gracious in talking about Showscan and
remembering it as the best film process he ever saw…so I think we’re gonna start
seeing some upward mobility in a lot of industry experimentation with frame
rates in the near future.”(A12)


The similarities between Trumbull and Cameron run deeper than just their passion
for advancing film technology, Cameron also refers to 2001: A Space Odyssey as
one of his biggest inspirations, "The first lightbulb moment (as a filmmaker)
was when I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, and the lightbulb there
was that a movie can be more than just telling a story. It can be a piece of
art. It can be something that has a profound impact on your imagination...It
sort of just blew the doors off the whole thing for me at the age of 14 and I
started thinking about film in a completely different way and got fascinated by
it.
"It's also to my knowledge one of the first films that really had a definitive
'making of' book...It was the first one I knew of that was available and I read
it from cover to cover 18 times and didn't understand half of it until many
years later...but it started a process of projecting myself into the idea of
actually creating images using these high tech means."(B16)



James Cameron on the set of Avatar


Cameron, fresh off the massive success of Avatar, hosted a panel at Cinemacon
2011 pushing for the use of higher frame rates, “When you author or project your
movie at 48 or 60 frames-per-second, it becomes a different movie. If the 3D
shows you a window into a reality, the higher frame rate takes the glass out of
the window.”(B1)
“We did this big frame rate presentation with 48 and 60. They’re both highly
superior to 24. What I think is clear is we’ve gotta get off 24.”(B11)


Cameron at that time was urging the industry to move on from the classic frame
rate we’re all accustomed to, whereas in more recent years, perhaps after the
reactions to Peter Jackson and Ang Lee’s experiments, has held a more reserved
opinion, “I have a personal philosophy around high frame rate, which is that it
is a specific solution to specific problems having to do with 3D. And when you
get the strobing and the judder of certain shots that pan or certain lateral
movement across frame, it's distracting in 3D. And to me, it's just a solution
for those shots. I don't think it's a format…I think it's a tool to be used to
solve problems in 3D projection. And I'll be using it sparingly throughout the
Avatar films.
“To me, the more mundane the subject, two people talking in the kitchen, the
worse it works, because you feel like you're in a set of a kitchen with actors
in makeup. That's how real it is, you know? But I think when you've got
extraordinary subjects that are being shot for real, or even through CG, that
hyper-reality actually works in your favor. So to me, it's a wand that you wave
in certain moments and use when you need it. It's an authoring tool.”(B6)


After bringing 3D into the forefront of Hollywood filmmaking with Avatar, many
were curious how the director would utilize high frame rates in Avatar 2, “We
tried to decide how to apply it and the rule was, whenever they're underwater,
it’s 48 frames. Boom. Just don’t even think about it. Some of the flying scenes,
some of the broad vistas benefit from 48 frames per second. If it’s just people
sitting around talking…it’s not necessary. In fact, it’s actually sometimes even
counterproductive because it looks a little too glassy smooth. So the trick to
it was to figure out where to use it and where not to use it. Now, the one thing
I will say pretty definitively is 48 frames doesn’t benefit a 2D movie very
much, if at all.”(B12)

Rereleasing the first Avatar in the months before its sequel, Cameron opted to
test this variable frame rate approach, employing Pixelworks’ TrueCutMotion to
remaster the 2009 film with their signature “Motion-grading” process. This
technology allows filmmakers to adjust the look of motion in a film, altering
the shutter angle, motion blur, and frame rate shot-by-shot. In late 2022 I got
the chance to see the original Avatar in this format, as well as a personal
demonstration of their toolkit, and the results are extremely intriguing.



TrueCutMotion's Motion Grading Process


TrueCutMotion claims it can utilize high frame rates while maintaining the
“cinematic look”, achieving a tailored balance between the hyper clarity of high
frame rates and the juddery cinematic look of 24fps. 


Approaching a remaster of the 2009 Avatar meant they had to first
interpolate(artificially insert frames) the film to 48fps before beginning their
motion grading process. The result is extremely impressive and does not feel
like an artificial interpolation. 
When I saw this remastered Avatar, it used the HFR frequently but was “Motion
Graded” in a way where the shift between the standard 24fps and 48fps was smooth
and felt right. A good example is in the protagonist’s first experience with the
bioluminescent forest, where the glassy-smooth HFR “video game” look adds an
alien presence to the visuals. There are certainly some shots where the HFR-look
was questionable, but it generally felt like a natural and “next-gen” addition
to the film, as predicted by Trumbull years earlier.

In TrueCutMotion’s demonstration of their toolkit, I got to examine the minimal
shifts in look as the dials for shutter angle, frame rate, and motion blur were
adjusted. Seeing how each shot demanded specific adjustments gave me a glimpse
into TCM’s vision for the future of film motion. Their tech allows for an
adjustable curve between the hyper smooth HFR look and the typical juddery
cinematic look, allowing filmmakers to take advantage of both, or simply to
solve problems with blur at 24fps. With TCM’s toolkit, shooting a movie in HFR
and reverting it back to a standard look would appear no different than if it
had been captured at the standard 24fps. Whether it’s for just one blurry
live-action panning shot, or a CG-animated film, this motion-grading process
could pay dividends for image clarity across the industry.


After the demonstration, the Pixelworks crew urged us to see their work on the
then-upcoming release of Avatar: The Way of Water, which ended up being, in my
opinion, a much more frustrating motion experience than the Avatar remaster.
Jarring switches between 24 and 48 frames per second resulted in two radically
different looks at any given time. While I thoroughly enjoyed the HFR in the
underwater scenes and during most of the action scenes, there were dozens of
shots in the film where I found it massively detracted from the cinematic look.

A few months after the release of The Way of Water, in an interview with Forbes,
Pixelworks’ General Manager Richard Miller clarified TCM’s work on the Avatar
sequel, “With The Way of Water we came in rather late. I mean, a lot of
decisions had already been made. So, in Avatar 2, from a motion perspective,
you've got three types of shots. You've got shots that are double
frame...they're effectively 24 frames per second. Then there are shots where the
CGI and everything else was done by Weta at 48 frames per second. So, it's
literally the same process that was used in Gemini Man and The Hobbit. We were
brought in for shots that didn't really work in either one of those
settings.”(B13)

The Way of Water had the advantage of being shot and rendered natively at 48
frames per second, which looked absolutely astonishing for the underwater
scenes, but the jarring switches between a pure 48 and 24 frames per second, as
well as the questionable implementation of these looks, resulted in an extremely
distracting experience, especially on first viewing.


Despite my stipulations with the HFR implementation, my second viewing of The
Way of Water on AMC Lincoln Square’s massive, curved IMAX screen blew my socks
off. I was astounded by how much a curved screen impacted the depth of the 3D,
and nullified my annoyance with the frame rates. The sense of depth was
massively increased. The occasional wide-angle shots brought me into the world
completely. 


Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

In perhaps my favorite visual sequence from the film, a character wakes up in an
alien body before being informed that his human self is dead and that he now
carries that person’s memories. This long, floaty, wide-angle shot pushes the
depth of the 3D to its limit, hovering behind this character in a zero-G
environment that begs comparison to the afterlife. This experience, along with
many more sequences of the film, including the underwater sections, enlightened
me to the transportive power of a large, curved screen, and its impact on the 3D
sensation.


"I am fundamentally against flat screens. If you want a flat screen, stay home
and watch television"
-Douglas Trumbull

This combination of curved screens, stereo 3D, high frame rates,
large-screen-cinematography, and subjective POVs all add up to a more immersive
and involving theatrical experience; vastly increasing the sense of presence the
audience can absorb from a film, evoking the feeling of being mounted on a small
drone, rather than looking up at a large image. Like Douglas Trumbull said when
describing his Luxor hotel experiences, “You feel like you’re inside the movie.
You’re not just looking at the movie, you’re in the movie.”(A8)






Douglas Trumbull spent his entire life working to further the technological art
form that is cinema. Many film fans read this push to advance film technology as
an attack on what makes cinema, that a focus on technology detracts from what
makes a good film; meaningful scripts, engaging performances, riveting
camerawork, well-paced editing, and unique art direction. 
I hope Trumbull's story inspires us to look beyond our personal idea of cinema
and embrace the future of moving images. Trumbull's end goal was to use superior
technology and immersive filmmaking techniques to infiltrate the subconscious of
the viewer, something Stanley Kubrick aimed to do in 1968 with 2001, and what
James Cameron tried to accomplish with his Avatar movies half a century later.
For more than a decade, film pundits referred to the first Avatar film as a tech
demo with a mediocre story, and blamed its overwhelming success on the
trendiness of 3D, before the sequel 13 years later doubled down on its
technological dependence and immersive techniques, to find overwhelming success
at the box office yet again. Half a century after the release of 2001, audiences
are still heading to the theater in hopes of the Ultimate Trip.





SOURCES
A1: Trumbull Cinemadaily Q+A
https://cinemadailyus.com/filmmakers/qa-with-douglas-trumbull-a-special-effect-supervisor-who-worked-on-2001-a-space-odyssey-blade-runner-star-trek-the-motion-picture-and-close-encounters-of-the-third-kind/
A2: Douglas Trumbull on the Future of Film (https://youtu.be/47wO-Az22v0)
A3: Trumbull Studios: The Magi Process (https://youtu.be/JhbFrkCJ_nA)
A4:
http://stevediggins.com/2014/09/10/vfx-legend-douglas-trumbull-talks-about-the-future-of-film-and-kubrick/
A5: Immersive Media Part 3 Clip (https://youtu.be/Z-glm-EFCWc)
A6: Stanley Kubrick 1968 Playboy interview
(https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/playboy-interview-stanley-kubrick/)
A7: Stanley Kubrick 1987 Rolling Stone Interview (https://youtu.be/ehQf0LJVOHQ)
A8: Making of the Luxor Hotel Las Vegas (https://youtu.be/GICZjTzAPBI)
A9: Remembering Douglas Trumbull
(https://www.inparkmagazine.com/remembering-douglas-trumbull-part-2/)
A10: Trumbull Roger Ebert Interview 2014
(https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/the-magic-of-magi-douglas-trumbulls-quest-to-explore-a-new-planet-of-cinematic-potential)
A11: Trumbull PBS Interview
(https://www.pbs.org/video/douglas-trumbull-interview-vinigy/)
A12: Trumbull Masterclass (https://youtu.be/FBaZQojd1_s)
A13: Trumbull Documentary - Film as Experience (https://youtu.be/8ZX7RynZRjU)
A14: Trumbull 2021 Indiewire Interview
(https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/2001-vfx-douglas-trumbull-cgi-kubrick-1234634471/)
A15: Trumbull 2015 ParallaxView interview
(https://parallax-view.org/2022/02/09/breaking-new-ground-has-always-been-in-the-medium-itself-an-interview-with-douglas-trumbull/)
A16: Trumbull Memorial Timeline
(https://www.celestis.com/participants-testimonials/douglas-hunt-trumbull/)
A17: Roger Ebert on Showscan
(https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/screen-gimmicks-nothing-new)
A18: Trumbull describing frame rate experiments (https://vimeo.com/674966802)
B1: Cinemacon 2011 Panel (https://youtu.be/_l9BxxPiGFY)
B2: Empire Magazine January 2022 (Page 91)
B3: AMC Laser Projection
(https://investor.amctheatres.com/newsroom/news-details/2022/AMC-Theatres-Introduces-Laser-at-AMC-Powered-by-Cinionic-Ushering-in-the-Next-Evolution-of-On-Screen-Presentation/)
B4: Peter Jackson Variety Interview
(https://variety.com/2013/film/news/peter-jackson-hobbit-3d-looks-1200941962/)
B5: Peter Jackson 2022 Uproxx Interview
(https://uproxx.com/hitfix/peter-jackson-interview-mortal-engines-lord-of-the-rings/)
B6: James Cameron on Gemini Man HFR
(https://collider.com/avatar-sequels-no-hfr-james-cameron/)
B7: Ang Lee Experience on Life of Pi
(https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/gemini-man-ang-lee-interview-promise-digital-hfr-3d-cinema-1202180316/)
B8: Ang Lee Interview on Billy Lynn 2016
(https://deadline.com/2016/05/ang-lee-billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk-cannes-disruptor-interview-1201752479/)
B9: Trumbull filmmaker magazine interview
(https://filmmakermagazine.com/102741-interview-douglas-trumbull-2017/)
B10: Peter Jackson The Hobbit BTS (https://youtu.be/20vA9U7J2qQ)
B11: James Cameron on getting off 24fps (https://youtu.be/cMm9nZxOaE8)
B12: James Cameron on Avatar 2 HFR (https://youtu.be/coIfiKxCahk)
B13 : TrueCutMotion Forbes interview
(https://www.forbes.com/sites/bennyhareven/2023/02/27/can-avatar-the-way-of-waters-truecut-motion-tech-save-high-frame-rate-cinema/?sh=7a253a4f43f9)
B14: Trumbull on The Hobbit
(https://www.cnn.com/2013/05/13/tech/innovation/douglas-trumbull-interview/index.html)
B15: James Cameron sci fi documentary (https://youtu.be/gyHcLOnLilM @ 0:25)
B16: James cameron on 2001 (https://youtu.be/dkHeJOFsQPc @ 19:00)



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